The Crunch
by issybizz
Summary: The whole school have been evacuated to the great hall at the news of Voldermorts presence. There’s a rumour going around that Dumbledore has been hurt and where is Harry? This is the battle! When it comes to the crunch we see exactly who is on who’s


A/N: No harm intended, purely for my own fun. Characters are not mine.  
  
Summary: The whole school have been evacuated to the great hall at the news of Voldermorts presence. There's a rumour going around that Dumbledore has been hurt and where is Harry? This is the battle! When it comes to the crunch we see exactly who is on who's side. Story ship has mild Ginny/Draco. In Ron Weasley's point of view.  
  
~~~~~ The Crunch  
  
The four house tables had been vanished; leaving every student of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry either slumped on the floor or standing, zombie-like, in the space of the protecting Great Hall.  
  
The old castle stood tall against the thunderous storm outside. The constant waterfall of streaming mud-yellow rain blackened every window in Hogwarts School of Witch Craft and Wizardry.  
  
Although unseen in the unnatural blackness, the forbidden forest could be heard wheezing and fighting the high winds. Ron was sure he heard a thick tree-trunk CRASH to the ground even from within the crowded heart of the great hall. The semi-ceiling above the Great Hall flashed and banged with every one of Ron's angry and erratic heartbeats.  
  
All around the great hall Ron saw students sobbing uncontrollably into their hands; some onto someone else's shoulder and hugging, whereas other's were motionless, almost as if they had been petrified, (perhaps it would have been better if they had been).  
  
Ron jerked his swollen head to the left and saw a tall, shaken Ginny comforting a clearly distraught Hermione. He stood there, alone among the 1000 other students - simply staring at the two girls and wondered, for what felt like an eternity, when exactly had Ginny become so grown-up?  
  
Harry Potter, Ron's greatest friend was nowhere to be seen when professor McGonagall made *the* announcement just after the whole school had been evacuated into the Great Hall. However, if the rumour was true, then Ron knew where Harry probably was likely to be. He would be outside fighting alongside Dumbledore. Every word of McGonagall's speech still rung fresh in Ron's ears.  
  
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"Everyone has been brought here, as most already know..." Ron recalled Professor McGonagall's speech. "... for your protection." Her face was lightened by anger but her red eyes were always on the brink of exploding with tears. Her normally tight and prefect bun was askew with loose wet strands which had escaped her normally tight hair.  
  
"Voldermort is here!" She went on with a huge intake of breath, forcing herself to continue. "The great" Her voice rose with every letter, "Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore... Has been mortally..."  
  
She paused as though about to throw up and with the little breath she still had exclaimed "Is dead."  
  
As the school erupted against a particularly tremendous clash of thunder McGonagall throw-up and pulled out a rain drenched handkerchief the castle itself seemed to cry.  
  
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On the umpteenth recall of the speech Ginny caught Ron's eye and beckoned him over.  
  
"Harry's gone outside too hasn't he?" Ginny asked Ron firmly - her eyes ablaze with fire which Ron could feel radiating outwards.  
  
Unable to speak, Ron just dropped his head to the floor, knowing somehow, instinctively/internally that he had gone with the Headmaster.  
  
Hermione piped-up aggressively, "We should tell the teachers!"  
  
All three of them looked over to where the teachers had been congregating but three stood only Madame Sprout, Mr Flinch and the Librarian. Cowering behind them, an assortment of house-elf's jittered timidly from one foot to the other.  
  
"They've gone!" Hermione cried, "They've all gone outside to fight! The useless ones are left behind to look after us!" She stood up and frantically began searching the great morbid/sombre hall.  
  
Nevelle came rushing through the dense black cloud of students to their direction, falling over Ron's feet when he reached them. Dean Thomas and Seamus Finagun followed behind Nevelle's wake.  
  
"What are you waiting for!" Nevelle screamed before managing to pull himself off the floor, demanding arthritically. "Let's help Harry!" There wasn't a shadow of hesitation on his stern, and quite frightening red-face.  
  
"But -" But before hermione could complain Ginny pulled Hermione towards the unguarded exit doors - this clearly was a non-debating matter.  
  
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Outside however, Nevelle had gone quiet again. The rain pounded on the four of six of them from every direction with the force of ten elephants.  
  
"Lumos!" shouted Ginny and the others repeated. As Ron lit his wand, he felt a sense of forbidding - they were no match for Lord Voldermort, and now they were exposed and unprotected, and too add they had no Dumbledore.  
  
Unexpectedly but undeniably, behind them immense dazzling light silhouetted Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Nevelle, Dean and Seamus in the blackened air.  
  
For a fleeting moment, Ron thought of his dad's flying magic car which had run away in his second year.  
  
The four spun 180 degrees around with their wands outstretched infront of them. A thick gang of wizards and witches confronted them, their faces hidden behind the strength of the lit wands.  
  
"Lower your wands!" the voice of Ernie McMillan called through a crack of thunder as blue lightening scorched the sky, throwing the strangers into full eerie light.  
  
Ron dropped his jaw, almost dropping his wand at the same time. There stood, packed close together, a knot of determined faced members of the DA, All that is, except for Zacarius Smith.  
  
"Get back inside!" Hermione shouted bossily, "There's no need to risk more lives tonight!"  
  
"Sorry Hermione!" replied Susan Bones as the wind whistled among the shivering tree's. "The DA only follow leaders directly from the leader. Plus, the stronger we stand united the more chance we have of helping to find Harry!"  
  
"Yeah!" shouted Justin Flinch- Fletchy. "All we want to do is help Harry - we are Dumbledore's Army." He finished proudly.  
  
"Hurry up! We are wasting time!" Ginny wasn't one for patients tonight, Ron noticed.  
  
The remaining DA members walked sure-footed among the soggy mud under their shoes, which had by now drenched Ron's socks right thought to his skin and bone.  
  
Inside he felt fearful, scared, angry and anxious, however outside he proceeded firm and determined, gaining his strength from everyone around him. He expected this was the same for the others too.  
  
It felt like the group had been walking in the same blind circle seven times already before they spotted it. Green and red sparks sizzling each one with the power of twenty wands alighted the forest between the thick branches up ahead.  
  
A wave of condemnation yet determination grabbed the group as they increased their pace towards the action. As they drew closer to the scene, huge trees lay ripped, burnt, scarred and upturned on the ground.  
  
The floor, as Nevelle unfortunately experienced first hand, had become ever more slippery the deeper they matched.  
  
"There's Harry - HARRY!" Ernie McMillan shouted and pointed behind a charcoal simering old, thick tree.  
  
Ron looked in the direction but saw nothing however the sparks and stopped. "Ernie you PRAT!" Ron screeched in hysterics. "You-Know-Who would have heard you" He swallowed hard "Heard - all of us!"  
  
Silence.  
  
"Look." A whimper escaped Hermione and caught in the silence. "It is Harry!"  
  
She was right. Harry had peered around the tree, his face black and robes scorched.  
  
"McGonagall!" cried Seamus. She was suspended by some kind of grey bubble in the air bashing and throwing spells at it, desperately trying to escape from suffocation.  
  
"You Fools!" a booming, ear splintering almost laughing voice sounded from all around them - from the dead trees, to the close air itself. "Thinking you've got hope at all in defeating me and preventing the over-due death of Harry Potter - Ha.Ha.Ha!"  
  
Another cackle, this time not of natural thunder but of a booming, heart stopping kind, that filled Ron's insides with ice. Ron glanced over to Harry's limp form hanging over the fallen tree as deep drops were escaping from Harry's jaw and stomached. Blood.  
  
"Dumbledore was twice - " Nevelle bravely chirped up furiously back at the disembodied voice.  
  
"Silencio! Dumbledore was twice the age of I, little boy!" Voldermorts spell cut Nevelle off, this time the amused tone was subdued.  
  
"Dumbledore grew old and weak. He chose to sacrifice his own life for Harry Potter rather than finish me off - which if he was fifty years younger he might have had the power to do so."  
  
Ron looked around his fellow DA members who held their wands against the face of death, all looking scarier than Ron thought possible. Ginny's amazingly red hair tingling in the thunderous atmosphere, stepped forward without a trace of fear or hesitation.  
  
"You all bore me little miss guided ones." The voice spoke once more. "Kill them all for their insolence and devotion to Dumbledore." This time the voice sounded not from all around them but in front of them hidden just out of range from all their wand's combined light.  
  
Four figures in Hogwarts robes stepped out from behind a tree began to draw nearer to Ron and the others.  
  
Ron's Heart was pounding so hard he had blocked out the pelting rain. He saw Zacarius Smith advancing in towards them with, besides his Crabbe, Goyle and.  
  
".DRACO?!" Ginny cried to the shock horror of everyone else's surprise, as she took a giant step back, or perhaps it was to recover from her almost faint.  
  
She look young again - Ron observed. Her eyes wide and her nose as small as a button. She dropped her wand p the marshy forest floor uncontrollably.  
  
"Pathetic Girl - how dare you even THINK you are even worthy enough to take on me!" The cold, violent voice chimed again all around them and seeping from the floors.  
  
With that, the thin, skeleton figure of Lord Voldermort stood in the light and shot a blast wave at Ginny before disappearing again into the shadows.  
  
Ron felt sick! His little sister! His only sister! Ginny! He couldn't thing.  
  
"Ginny!" a pleading almost hysterical shout seemed to come from far away in Ron's head. He was sure he hadn't just shouted.  
  
Draco Malfoy had run, full pelt to Ginny, but he was too late. Her limp body, which kept drifting in and out of consciousness fighting her hardest not to fall asleep, hit the ground just at Malfoy reached her.  
  
"Ginny!" Draco whispered as he knelt next to her and supported her lolling head by placing it delicately onto his lap.  
  
Ron went to say something. He was torn, his life ripped apart all because of Voldermort. Although no one could see it, but not only Ron's ears had turned red, but his nose, cheeks, lips, fingers all had far gone past the colour of red, they were now purple.  
  
Hermione too seemed bewildered as she turned to face Ron, his mouth catching more than flies.  
  
"What - the - ?" Ron whispered only because his breath had been winded from out of his soul, while goggling at the back of a slimy, pompous, blonde, evil, Draco Malfoy's head.  
  
The world seemed to have slowed. Perhaps even frozen from the second Ginny had called out Draco's name.  
  
"Oh Draco!!" Voldermorts voice sighed heartedly and disappointedly into the bitter cold thunderous night.  
  
Fog had all of a sudden just appeared hovering below Ron's knees.  
  
"What a waiste - kill him too!" Voldermort sang loudly and strongly at the other three who too, ahd become perplexed. "Lucius will be very disappointed."  
  
The looks of Crabbe and Goyles faces were of pure discussed, betrayal and confusion. The three set off again advancing on the large group with a newfound hatred burning and bubbling inside of them - growing and overtaking their senses.  
  
"NO!" Zacarius Smith turned on his heal to block the two fat goons in their stead. His eyebrows were low, eyes eagle wide and his voice - not a command or an order nore a desperate shout. It was a fact.  
  
Ron could not only see, but hear Grabbe and Goyles minds ticking and re- calculating in the attempt to comprehend why the third had stopped them.  
  
A smile slid out of the side of Ron's purple lips, no matter how he hoped it wouldn't. They would be here all season before the two brainless goons came to a conclusion. However, a clatter of horrific thunder and a glimpse of Ginny being tenderly spoken to be Malfoy, ("Don't leave me Ginny - I don't care who knows, I'm sorry - Ginny come on open your eyes, it's me Draco" and kissing her hand mow and then which he held firmly in his own) soon whipped the smile that creped out of Ron away.  
  
Zacarius Smith held his wand at them - he however wasn't going to wait till next season for the two to conclude. With a quickened lost spell spoken to his wand both Crabbe and Goyle became as stiff as a board and fell backwards into the leaves.  
  
Zacarius then moved away from them to join Ron and the rest of the group. But Justin Flinch- Fletchy held out his wand at the boys' chest making him stop dead, and a face of mistrust and deep hurt on his face.  
  
"Zacarius - ?" Voldernorts, mortifying voice boomed enquiringly. "Well dear me. This had been a very insightful trip."  
  
Harry still hung fro his life on the withered tree trunk.  
  
"Harry Potter" The dark lords voice called, "Your friends are with you tonight HOWEVER now with Dumbledore out of the picture, (crackle of angry thunder) I will be free to pounce on you when you least expect it. I can rein havoc among muggles and wizards alike!" Voldermort laughed so hard the rain stopped.  
  
"Even better! If you do manage to live your wounds, I will kill each of your friends one by one Potter, seeing as you don't want to die." A horror crept among the DA gang at his words.  
  
"I will watch as everything you hold dear to you withers away and dies. First I will kill those whom have both disobeyed me and crossed me here tonight, and then it will be your friend's families, teachers and then the muggles. You may live Harry. But you will be the only one who does."  
  
A pop of the grey bubble bursting and a thump as McGonagal fell to the floor sounded. A crack of Voldermort appirating then followed and then.  
  
Silence. Silence of not only the forest but also the world as it began mourning for the great Albus Dumbledore. 


End file.
